The NPR Politics Podcast - Julian Castro Drops Out Of 2020 Race; Candidates Release Fundraising Numbers

Episode Date: January 2, 2020

Julián Castro, who served as secretary of housing and urban development in the Obama administration , has ended his presidential campaign. Elements of his progressive campaign platform, including decriminalizing illegal border crossings, were adopted by other Democrats in the race.Also, President Trump and leading Democrats have previewed their fourth-quarter fundraising hauls. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign announced it raised $34.5 million since October. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang raised $16.5 million, an increase over the roughly $10 million his campaign raised in the third quarter. This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Chris calling from Sydney, Australia, sitting on a beach watching the sunset on the last day of the decade. This podcast was recorded at... It is 1.54 Eastern on Thursday, January 2nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. So guys, we have been talking about 2020 since like mid-2018. This is the first time we are all here together potting in 2020. We've made it. We did it. It's almost over. Yay. If by almost over you mean an entire year of traveling the country, covering the campaign as the voting and caucusing actually happens. That's going to be the theme of most of the year. So let's just get into it right away. You have captured my nuance, Scott. Thank you. And along that theme of what's to come, Danielle, you are in Iowa right now. Where are you? I am standing in a corner, the quietest corner I could find, of the National Motorcycle Museum,

which is in Anamosa, Iowa. It is a town in eastern Iowa. Joe Biden is set to talk here in, I don't know, about half an hour. And luckily for our podcast taping, these are motorcycles on display and not active motorcycles. They are not revving as far as I know. I don't think that's going to happen. But if you want a real cool shot of me next to a hog, I can I can get one of those. We will talk more about Joe Biden in a minute. But first, as we say hello to this new decade, we must say goodbye to another 2020 presidential candidate. The first bye bye bye of 2020 goes to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who ended his campaign earlier today. I'm so proud of the campaign we've run together.

We've shaped the conversation on so many important issues in this race, stood up for the most vulnerable people, and given a voice to those who are often forgotten. But with only a month until the Iowa caucuses, and given the circumstances of this campaign season, I've determined that it simply isn't our time. And Castro, you know, never really approached that top tier of candidates. But Domenico, I do think he did have an outsized impact on this race when it came to policies he laid out there that often a lot of other candidates had to respond to. Yeah, I mean, the one moment that really stands out from the campaign is when he pushed decriminalizing border crossings and really sort of stood out in the debates that he was in talking about underrepresented and underserved communities. Right. Yeah. And decriminalizing border crossings was one of the centerpieces of his campaign.

It was the first big policy that he really rolled out. And he really helped shape the conversation on that. And aside from that, he also pushed diversity to such an extent that in recent weeks, he had been talking to Iowans about how Iowa, because it is not representative of the country as a whole, should not be the first national caucus state. I'm going to tell the truth. It's time for the Democratic Party to change the way that we do our presidential nominating process. And we're going to have a conversation about that tonight. Part of the reason for that is that I don't believe that the two states that begin the process, Iowa and New Hampshire, are reflective of the diversity

of our country or of our party. I mean, he's not wrong, but not a way, as I guess him dropping out of the race illustrates, not a way to win support in Iowa and New Hampshire. Yeah. And look, it reminds me of the fact that we just had two podcasts on Iowa and New Hampshire. And part of those were, you know, we highlighted the fact that Iowa and New Hampshire, both overwhelmingly white states, even in the Democratic primary. And it's particularly glaring when it comes to the Democratic Party because of how the Democratic Party itself has changed and become more diverse. And look, Castro was the one Latino in the race, and now he's dropped out. And he had petitioned the DNC to lower the debate

threshold so that you could have more candidates on stage. And right now it just is. You have five of the top candidates are all white, though. One of the themes we've talked a lot about this year is that for a lot of voters of color, issues or other factors seem to maybe trump the idea of focusing on diversity, identity. Yeah. And, you know, for example, Bernie Sanders polls really, really well with Latino voters. And younger African-Americans. I mean, even in our last poll that we had because of his overwhelming support with young voters and young people of color, he led overall with voters of color. Joe Biden is supported, obviously, by African-Americans

overwhelmingly, especially older African-Americans. So voters of color are still very important within the Democratic primary. They're just supporting other candidates. Yeah. A couple other thoughts on Castro before we shift gears. First of all, when we interviewed a lot of the candidates over the summer for our On the Trail series, where we sat down and had extended conversations with them, I really came away from the Castro interview thinking that he was much more blunt. I spoke like a real human being than a lot of the other candidates we talked to. And that was my main impression walking away from that interview. And I asked him in that conversation about another roadblock that he faced.

And I think Cory Booker was in a similar position where they had both at one point been like the hot new thing in the Democratic Party, a rising mayor with a really interesting, different background. And both of them saw that status really pulled under the rug from them by one former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Fun fact, as of yesterday, he is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. So I asked Castro how he dealt with the highs and lows of at one point being this rising star of the party and another point being an afterthought in a crowded field. And he said, So I knew that when I got into the presidential race, the response wouldn't be exactly the same. If I had decided that I wanted to run in 2016 for some reason, I would have been the young, new, fresh candidate running that year after delivering the keynote address in 2012. I knew this would be different. I accept that. That just means, like everything else in life, that you have to work hard. And that's what we've done. We've

kept our head down. We've tried to connect with people. And I knew that I would have to get stronger in this campaign little by little. It sounds almost as if he fell into a sort of valley among the candidates where he's a little too well-known to be the hot new thing, but not ubiquitous enough to be Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden who came into this race with massive name recognition. It's almost like it's bad to be in the middle there. I think, yeah, and I think Cory Booker and until very recently Amy Klobuchar and a few others were in that same boat. So a quick note, you can listen to that full interview with Julian Castro and all the other candidates that we talked to this summer by subscribing to our playlist on Spotify, which is a newish thing.

You can just head to n.pr slash on the trail Spotify to start listening. We're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, numbers. The first fundraising numbers from the end of 2019 and what they tell us of this race with just about a month to go before Iowa. Did you get a smart speaker for a gift over the holidays? Well, consider it the gift that keeps on giving, right? Because it can help you keep up with the news. Just say Play NPR to hear your local NPR station and all your favorite NPR shows as well.

And we're back. We get fundraising numbers from presidential candidates four times a year. They're reported in three-month chunks, the quarters of the year. One of those quarters just ended, and we have our latest snapshot of how much the campaigns are

raising and what it tells us. And Domenico, before we dig into numbers, can you just give us a reminder of why we care about these figures, what they actually tell us? I mean, at first, part of it is media narrative. Like it signifies whether or not someone has strong grassroots support. It signifies how long someone can go on. I mean, if you think about candidates who have dropped out, a big reason for why they dropped out is because they didn't have enough funds to move on and continue going in a race. You have to pay staff, you have to be able to put on TV ads, and you got to be able to keep the lights on. All right, so let's tick through the numbers that we have so far as of this taping and then talk about what we think. Bernie Sanders raised

$34.5 million. It's probably going to be the most. It's about $10 million more than he raised in the third quarter of last year. Pete Buttigieg, $24.7 million. Joe Biden just announced $22.7 million. Andrew Yang raised $16.5 million, which is way more than he was raising earlier in the year. And even though we don't have the final numbers from Elizabeth Warren yet, she had told supporters a few days before the end of the quarter that up until that point, she had brought in about $17 million. So that's the state that we have so far. Danielle, what jumps out to you? Well, I think one thing that maybe it's important to clarify here is that these are numbers through the end of the year, that is true, but thus far

the candidates have not been required to release all of the information yet. So what we are hearing right now, yes, are these broad top-line totals, but also what we are hearing now are essentially what the candidates and the campaigns want us to hear. So what we aren't necessarily hearing are things like cash on hand or that sort of thing. But what we are hearing is candidates touting, for example, their average donation size so they can prove that they have grassroots bona fides and that sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, Bernie Sanders total is eye popping. The fact that he not only raises almost thirty five million dollars in one quarter, but it really shows that the faithful who've been with Bernie Sanders since 2016 or 2015 are still with him. And for everyone who thought, including some of us, that, you know, his support was open to potentially going to someone like Elizabeth Warren. Bernie Sanders is leading in all of the polling with progressives. Warren is struggling to peel off those Sanders supporters.

We thought that she had gotten them at some point in October. And at this point, you see Sanders having risen in some of the polls and he's leading in fundraising. He's positioned pretty well to go on pretty far in this race if it comes to that. And Biden's figure of $22.7 million, which we got as we were taping this podcast, I think really fits with the way we've been looking at his campaign in that he's been a front runner, but with a lot of vulnerabilities. But as the year went on, he got stronger and stronger, if not in a massive way, but certainly having more staying power than a lot of people expected. He had raised a little bit more than $15 million in the third quarter.

He increases that to $22.7 million, certainly far behind Bernie Sanders, but up there with Pete Buttigieg, who's been leading the charge for Democrats. Yeah, and one more thing I want to get at. I'm going to go back to averages because this whole average donation thing is a thing that fascinates me quite a bit. Is that average donations, we were talking about this before the show, I think you can credit Bernie Sanders in 2016 for really raising how loudly candidates talk about average donations. And there's sort of a paradox at work in that on the one hand, candidates need a crazy amount of money to run for this office. And on the other

hand, they're trying to get it in as small of increments as they possibly can. And so you have, for example, Bernie Sanders touting that his average donation this last quarter was around $18.50. Pete Buttigieg's memo on his fundraising made a very clear point of saying our average donation was around $33. And you can understand why the Buttigieg campaign would be trying to really trumpet that after they have been attacked quite a bit, especially by Elizabeth Warren, for the whole wine cave fundraiser. You know, we should really put some of these numbers in context, though. I mean, the fact is, Mike Bloomberg has been spending, you know, more than $100 million to this point on television ads. In one week, this week, he's spending more money, $36 million,

than Bernie Sanders took in the entire fourth quarter. And I think it's a reminder to bigger than just this primary that money is money. And as Danielle noted, the candidates need a lot of it to run and win in a presidential campaign. And President Trump is blowing all these numbers out of the water for the most part, and he doesn't care where the money comes from. Well, that's the last question I had for you to put this all in context. On one hand, President Trump's campaign raises forty six million dollars during the same time period, way more than any other Democrats. But on the other hand, if you add all the Democrats together, they're raising way more than he is. So how do we look at this, that Donald Trump would be stronger than the eventual Democrat on this front

or that there's more Democratic enthusiasm than Republican enthusiasm? I think Democrats will have the money once they get a nominee, but right now they're splintering that cash, and Trump certainly has a head start. Right. And to add one more thing to that, speaking anecdotally here, and Scott, you can tell me if you've heard this on the trail too, almost every voter I talk to will tell me, yes, I'm enthusiastic about candidate X, whoever they're here to see, but really they are so enthusiastic about defeating Donald Trump. And so whoever the nominee ends up being, I wonder if whatever fundraising their candidate might've had, it just gets shunted to the eventual nominee because

Democrats just want to win. Yeah. And I think unless this primary takes a drastic turn over the next four months, every Democrat who's not the nominee, I'm sure, will be fundraising for the nominee. Sure. Yeah. All right. That is it for today. We will be back tomorrow with our weekly roundup because, yes, it's true. The holidays confuse everybody. But tomorrow is Friday, not Tuesday. So Friday, weekly roundup tomorrow in your feed. Yeah, I don't know if you knew that. Until then, head to n.pr slash politics newsletter to sign up for a roundup of our best online analysis. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover the campaign. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

Happy New Year. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.